Wednesday, March 5, 2008

I sent this metaphor to a co-worker today. Thought it was worth sharing.

"Around release time, I use the analogy of spinning plates. I like that analogy for several reasons.

1 - the activity of spinning plates requires constant intervention 2 - adding a spinning plate is easy; maintaining it amongst all the others is difficult 3 - spinning plates have an implied order, but can fail out-of-order just as easily 4 - those involved in spinning plates cannot rest...EVER. 5 - you only notice spinning plates when they stop spinning (eg, they fall off and break ) 6 - to be successful at plate spinning, you have to move MORE than the plates do 7 - once you start, it is not easy to stop spinning plates without breaking something

To me, this perfectly describes the current process of delivering updates and releases; why success is so hard and failure is so easy."